Rudolph's father, the local freight-agent, had floated with the second
wave of German and Irish stock to the Minnesota-Dakota country.
Theoretically, great opportunities lay ahead of a young man of energy in
that day and place, but Carl Miller had been incapable of establishing
either with his superiors or his subordinates the reputation for
approximate immutability which is essential to success in a hierarchic
industry. Somewhat gross, he was, nevertheless, insufficiently
hard-headed and unable to take fundamental relationships for granted,
and this inability made him suspicious, unrestful, and continually
dismayed.
His two bonds with the colorful life were his faith in the Roman
Catholic Church and his mystical worship of the Empire Builder, James J.
Hill. Hill was the apotheosis of that quality in which Miller himself
was deficient--the sense of things, the feel of things, the hint of rain
in the wind on the cheek. Miller's mind worked late on the old decisions
of other men, and he had never in his life felt the balance of any
single thing in his hands. His weary, sprightly, undersized body was
growing old in Hill's gigantic shadow. For twenty years he had lived
alone with Hill's name and God.
On Sunday morning Carl Miller awoke in the dustless quiet of six o'clock.
Kneeling by the side of the bed he bent his yellow-gray hair and the
full dapple bangs of his mustache into the pillow, and prayed for
several minutes. Then he drew off his night-shirt--like the rest of his
generation he had never been able to endure pajamas--and clothed his
thin, white, hairless body in woollen underwear.
He shaved. Silence in the other bedroom where his wife lay nervously
asleep. Silence from the screened-off corner of the hall where his son's
cot stood, and his son slept among his Alger books, his collection of
cigar-bands, his mothy pennants--"Cornell," "Hamlin," and "Greetings
from Pueblo, New Mexico"--and the other possessions of his private life.
From outside Miller could hear the shrill birds and the whirring
movement of the poultry, and, as an undertone, the low, swelling
click-a-tick of the six-fifteen through-train for Montana and the green
coast beyond. Then as the cold water dripped from the wash-rag in his
hand he raised his head suddenly--he had heard a furtive sound from the
kitchen below.
He dried his razor hastily, slipped his dangling suspenders to his
shoulder, and listened. Some one was walking in the kitchen, and he knew
by the light footfall that it was not his wife. With his mouth faintly
ajar he ran quickly down the stairs and opened the kitchen door.
Standing by the sink, with one hand on the still dripping faucet and the
other clutching a full glass of water, stood his son. The boy's eyes,
still heavy with sleep, met his father's with a frightened, reproachful
beauty. He was barefooted, and his pajamas were rolled up at the knees
and sleeves.
For a moment they both remained motionless--Carl Miller's brow went down
and his son's went up, as though they were striking a balance between
the extremes of emotion which filled them. Then the bangs of the
parent's moustache descended portentously until they obscured his mouth,
and he gave a short glance around to see if anything had been disturbed.
The kitchen was garnished with sunlight which beat on the pans and made
the smooth boards of the floor and table yellow and clean as wheat. It
was the centre of the house where the fire burned and the tins fitted
into tins like toys, and the steam whistled all day on a thin pastel
note. Nothing was moved, nothing touched--except the faucet where beads
of water still formed and dripped with a white flash into the sink
below.
"What are you doing?"
"I got awful thirsty, so I thought I'd just come down and get----"
"I thought you were going to communion."
A look of vehement astonishment spread over his son's face.
"I forgot all about it."
"Have you drunk any water?"
"No----"
As the word left his mouth Rudolph knew it was the wrong answer, but the
faded indignant eyes facing him had signalled up the truth before the
boy's will could act. He realized, too, that he should never have come
down-stairs; some vague necessity for verisimilitude had made him want
to leave a wet glass as evidence by the sink; the honesty of his
imagination had betrayed him.
"Pour it out," commanded his father, "that water!"
Rudolph despairingly inverted the tumbler.
"What's the matter with you, anyways?" demanded Miller angrily.
"Nothing."
"Did you go to confession yesterday?"
"Yes."
"Then why were you going to drink water?"
"I don't know--I forgot."
"Maybe you care more about being a little bit thirsty than you do about
your religion."
"I forgot." Rudolph could feel the tears straining in his eyes.
"That's no answer."
"Well, I did."
"You better look out!" His father held to a high, persistent,
inquisitory note: "If you're so forgetful that you can't remember your
religion something better be done about it."
Rudolph filled a sharp pause with:
"I can remember it all right."
"First you begin to neglect your religion," cried his father, fanning
his own fierceness, "the next thing you'll begin to lie and steal, and
the _next_ thing is the _reform_ school!"
Not even this familiar threat could deepen the abyss that Rudolph saw
before him. He must either tell all now, offering his body for what he
knew would be a ferocious beating, or else tempt the thunderbolts by
receiving the Body and Blood of Christ with sacrilege upon his soul. And
of the two the former seemed more terrible--it was not so much the
beating he dreaded as the savage ferocity, outlet of the ineffectual
man, which would lie behind it.
"Put down that glass and go up-stairs and dress!" his father ordered,
"and when we get to church, before you go to communion, you better kneel
down and ask God to forgive you for your carelessness."
Some accidental emphasis in the phrasing of this command acted like a
catalytic agent on the confusion and terror of Rudolph's mind. A wild,
proud anger rose in him, and he dashed the tumbler passionately into the
sink.
His father uttered a strained, husky sound, and sprang for him. Rudolph
dodged to the side, tipped over a chair, and tried to get beyond the
kitchen table. He cried out sharply when a hand grasped his pajama
shoulder, then he felt the dull impact of a fist against the side of his
head, and glancing blows on the upper part of his body. As he slipped
here and there in his father's grasp, dragged or lifted when he clung
instinctively to an arm, aware of sharp smarts and strains, he made no
sound except that he laughed hysterically several times. Then in less
than a minute the blows abruptly ceased. After a lull during which
Rudolph was tightly held, and during which they both trembled violently
and uttered strange, truncated words, Carl Miller half dragged, half
threatened his son up-stairs.
"Put on your clothes!"
Rudolph was now both hysterical and cold. His head hurt him, and there
was a long, shallow scratch on his neck from his father's finger-nail,
and he sobbed and trembled as he dressed. He was aware of his mother
standing at the doorway in a wrapper, her wrinkled face compressing and
squeezing and opening out into new series of wrinkles which floated and
eddied from neck to brow. Despising her nervous ineffectuality and
avoiding her rudely when she tried to touch his neck with witch-hazel,
he made a hasty, choking toilet. Then he followed his father out of the
house and along the road toward the Catholic church.